November 2014

Lulworth and District Garden Society
The November meeting began with the Annual General Meeting. The current Committee was re-elected with exception of Mrs Margaret Keogh who indicated she wished to give up the role of chairman and stand down from the committee at the end of the year. Mr Phil Roberts agreed to take on the role of Secretary forthwith, which had been filled on an "acting" basis by the Treasurer, and therefore joins the committee. The AGM also agreed to increase the annual membership fee to £8.
Following the AGM a talk was given by Mr Brian Hesketh on "Organic Vegetable growing". He  has been growing vegetables organically for the past twelve years.  The key to successful organic vegetable growing is the practice of crop rotation on a three or four year cycle  and soil improvement with the addition of compost. The ideal mix for garden compost is a fifty - fifty mix of green and brown vegetable matter. Brown matter being shredded wood prunings from the garden and shredded paper. Another method of improving the soil is "Green" manure where certain plants are grown and left to mature before digging in. This type of plant includes grazing rye and buckwheat which will draw up nutrients already in the soil and make them available for the next sown crops. Packets of "green manure" seeds can be obtained from most garden centres. Some plants such as Brassicas take a lot of nutrients out  of the soil and heavy rain washes nutrients out, clearly these nutrients need to be replace prior to the next crop being sown. So it is important to be aware of the needs of the crops being planted. The regular addition of compost to the soil is to be recommended and where the "no dig" method is used there needs to be about nine inches added each year. Crop rotation helps to keep club root and other diseases at bay and the use of fine netting will keep carrot fly and leek moth pests away without using chemical controls.
This talk generated a lost of interest with many questions being asked during the tea and coffee period.

Flower of the month competition was won by Marian Roberts with a sunflower.

Date of next meeting :- The Christmas Party - Wed 10th December at Finley's for 7.30pm. Cost - £14 Members £16 non members. Tickets available from John Watts 01929 400749.
The Programme for 2015 is shown below :-
Month                Speaker            Topic
Wed 14th Jan.     Derek Luther     What we can expect from Fuchias.
Wed 11th Feb      Toby Branston   Heathlands at Arne
Wed 11th March   Diana Guy         Creativity in the garden
Wed 8th April       Martin Young     Hosta, Heuchera & Hellebores
Wed 13th May      Neil Lovesey      12 months of colour
Wed 10th June     Outing (yet to be arranged)
Wed 8th July        Members evening
Sat 22nd Aug        Annual Show
Wed 9th Sept       Mark Ching          A Thatcher's Tale
Wed 14th Oct       Marcus Dancer      Clematis and how to grow them
Wed 11th Nov      Jonathon Garratt   Container Gardening

Wed 9th Dec        Christmas Party.